Megan Marie And The Trials Of Adoption

July 12, 1992

On June 26, 1991, a girl was born at the Hospital of St. Raphael in New Haven. Her mother, having given two false names and no address, abandoned her eight hours later.

The mother's parental rights were terminated on July 31. Having gone through all the proper legal channels, the Department of Children and Youth Services gave the child to Jerry and Cindy LaFlamme of New Britain on Oct. 10, telling them the child was a "risk-free baby."

On Nov. 12, Gina Pellegrino, the baby's mother, contacted a DCYS social worker, who visited her on Nov. 14 and told her (incorrectly) that it was too late to get her baby back. On Dec. 16, Ms. Pellegrino filed a motion to reopen the judgment terminating her parental rights.

Not until Jan. 2, when they had had the baby for almost three months, did the LaFlammes learn that anything was amiss.

The deadline for reopening a civil judgment is four months after it is rendered by the court. Ms. Pellegrino didn't file her motion until after that deadline had passed. But the judge, John T. Downey, noted that the law provided an exception for "such cases in which the court has continuing jurisdiction." He said that the law governing termination of parental rights gave him this jurisdiction. The court is required to review the child's case plan every 12 months until its adoption plan was completed. That, he said, was "continuing jurisdiction."

Attorney General Richard Blumenthal disagrees with the judge's assessment, and has appealed the decision.

Amid all these tangled legal considerations, there are the even more tangled human concerns surrounding the child.

The LaFlammes tried to have children for 10 years. They were given a "risk-free baby" to adopt. After they had lived with the child for nine months and signed an adoption agreement, she was taken from them. Now workers for DCYS won't even tell Mrs. LaFlamme how the child is doing. It's confidential, they say.

Ms. Pellegrino was one very scared young woman when she went into the Hospital of St. Raphael last year. Her parents say they didn't know she was pregnant. No doubt she was haunted later by the knowledge that somewhere in the world there was a baby who was hers. She decided she wanted her back. Now that she has her

daughter, she has had to move twice and has been the subject of death threats.

Megan Marie is 1 year old. The soft spot on top of her head has not yet closed up. She is just beginning to speak. She has learned to trust two adults whom she knows as her parents. Now she is living somewhere else, with another person, and she is, no doubt, feeling pretty confused.

The LaFlammes are suffering because their emotions are inextricably bound up with the welfare of this child. Tragically, it's also the remnants of that need to bond that caused Ms. Pellegrino to want her baby back. But the child didn't know about Ms. Pellegrino. As far as the child was concerned, the LaFlammes were her parents.

Ms. Pellegrino does not deserve the harassment she has had to suffer. We sympathize with her situation. But she should remember the biblical story in which two women were fighting over the same baby, and Solomon, asked to make a judgment, suggested the baby be cut in two.

Emotionally, that's what's happening to Megan Marie. The most maternal thing Ms. Pellegrino could do would be to give the child back to those she knows as her parents